


stay with me, hold my hand

by cosmicallycatastrophic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Hair Brushing, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Permanent Injury, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), References to Depression, alternate title: me projecting onto bruce for 2k words, from the gauntlet yknw, more hurt than comfort im sorry, this is a lot sadder than i was expecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 15:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicallycatastrophic/pseuds/cosmicallycatastrophic
Summary: Bruce shakes his head. “No, but I can braid it if you want. It’ll keep it out of your face.” And he realises how much he wants to do that, to hold Thor’s head, to brush his hair, to wind his fingers through it, to help Thor even a fraction as much as Thor has helped him, even just by pulling his hair back.





	stay with me, hold my hand

**Author's Note:**

> this took way longer than it should have and is always way sadder than it should be, so i'm sorry, i just missed them interacting in endgame. this caused me major block so it's messier than i wanted but hnngng it's done!  
> content warning: both thor and bruce have a lot of grief after endgame (duh), both are dealing with depression and bruce does have some unhealthy thinking patters here  
> title from i will by mitski

Bruce is tired.

Everyone is tired, obviously, everyone lost someone, obviously, it’s not all about him, people  _ died _ , but Bruce- Bruce is tired. His bones hurt and his entire left side is either burned or tingling or numb. He had pushed what was left of the other guy in him back down under the surface, even though it means not healing right away (or maybe not ever, he thinks, he doesn’t know what nerve damage the gauntlet caused), but he needs to be Bruce right now. He needs to be small and human and vulnerable, hear his joints clicking, feel his head pulsing a drumbeat ache every morning. He thinks about Natasha, how if he had tried harder maybe he could’ve brought her back. He thinks about Tony, how if he had had Bruce’s gamma-irradiated body, he would still be here now, with his daughter, alive.

Maybe he kicked the Hulk out as a form of self punishment. Maybe it’s guilt, maybe it’s self-destructive. He doesn’t care. Now he can look at his hands, short and rough, and know that they’re all him, no green, even if they hurt.

He’s staying in New Asgard, sharing a cottage with Thor, until the Avengers compound can be rebuilt. It might never be, Bruce thinks with a stab of grief. They fought the Big Bad, and they won, but Steve is gone. Tony is gone. Natasha is gone. Clint is with his family, and Thor- Bruce doesn’t know; Thor has been quiet, drinking less and smiling more but still mourning, deep and long and painful, and he’s mentioned going travelling across the galaxy with a group of people (and a plant) who Bruce has never even met. It hurts, a little (a lot), but he can’t keep him here. He can’t force Thor to talk, he can’t go back to how they were; in Sakaar, when Thor saved him and kept saving him, when they were friends, and maybe more, but neither of them ever mentioned it. Bruce figured Thor was too busy killing his sister to have the relationship talk.

He’s not the same as he was then, and neither is Thor; they have both lost more than he would’ve thought possible. Thor lost his home, his brother, his best friend, his people, again and again, and Bruce doesn’t know how he can stand it; he got off lightly, by comparison. Just his friends. His family. And himself, the part of himself that he had tried to get rid of for so long, finally gone and leaving him raw and bleeding.

He knows Thor probably wouldn’t want him anymore, if he ever did. He thinks about it a lot, though. Wonders about all the small touches and the talks and the way Thor had always, always protected him. Wishes he had said something, even if it had come to nothing. He knows now he shouldn’t have left Thor like he did, grieving and alone. He wants to talk about it, wants to apologise, but he doesn’t know how; he’s never been good at expressing himself. That’s one area where the other guy has him beat. So he waits, the days passing slow and nondescript, Thor making himself busy with the arrangements for New Asgard and only offering small talk when they’re in the same room. He gets messages from Pepper, Scott, Rhodey, updates on their adjustment and inquiries into his, and he replies the same to each of them, saying he’s fine, and he thinks about Thor, about them, about how much more he can stand to lose.

***

It’s Sunday, damp and cold, and Bruce wakes up with a headache and cramp and the burning sensation of nerves waking up in his left arm. He thinks he might finally go to New York for a little while and see what people are doing over there, whether the Avengers facility is back up and running. Pepper has been emailing him pretty regularly, but Bruce stopped reading them a few days ago, feeling sick with guilt. He should be there, managing things, not Pepper, who had already been through so much, without having to clean up the Avengers’ mess. He’s outstayed his welcome here, nothing but a burden on Thor now anyway. He could go over, help Pepper sort through things, see Morgan again. He wants to be a good uncle to her, to be the opposite of what his own father had been.

Bruce goes downstairs, thinking over his accommodation back in New York, carefully feeling out the steps with his good foot before going down. He has slipped too many times because of the numbness in his leg.

Thor is sat in the kitchen, eating cereal and studying the wooden grain of the tabletop. His hair is unwashed and hanging over his profile, his eyes dark with shadows, and he looks up before Bruce can cough or say something awkward as a greeting.

“Hey, Banner,” he says, voice rough, and Bruce wonders how much sleep he got last night. His heart hurts, his head hurts, he just wants them to be okay, to be talking again, to be friends. He wants Thor to stay with him, selfishly. He swallows that down and turns on the coffee maker.

“Morning,” Bruce says back, facing away from Thor, bringing a mug down from the shelf and taking a bottle of aspirin out of the drawer. He busies himself, brewing coffee, pouring it out, sitting down opposite Thor before he speaks again. They don’t sit together much anymore. “You doing anything today?”

It’s the short small talk that they’ve been making do with since Thanos, ineffectual and boring. He wants to say more, he wants to talk to Thor like he used to, on sleepless nights drifting through space. When he’d told Thor about his father, his mother, the bullet he tried to put in his head; how cut open he had felt, how fragile. Thor hadn’t looked away, he had never looked away.

Bruce’s headache is getting worse.

“No,” Thor says, and then adds, “I was going to ask Brunnhilde to cut my hair, but I’m not sure I trust her with a blade that close to my neck.” He smiles at that, and Bruce’s chest loosens a little, and he smiles back.

“Why do you want to cut it?” Bruce asks, and he had forgotten how nice it is just to talk to Thor, to be with him, even if it isn’t like it was before, all those years ago.

“It gets in the way,” Thor says, running his fingers through his hair as much as he can before they snag on a tangle, pulling it away from his face. “It’s a bother. Do you cut hair?” Thor looks at him, hesitant, warm, different to how he was, but they’re both different, and Bruce is living with that.

Bruce shakes his head. “No, but I can braid it if you want. It’ll keep it out of your face.” And he realises how much he wants to do that, to hold Thor’s head, to brush his hair, to wind his fingers through it, to help Thor even a fraction as much as Thor has helped him, even just by pulling his hair back.

Thor is smiling wider at him now, not as wide as he used to, but getting there; the smile makes his eyes shine. “Where did you learn to braid hair, Bruce? Was it in one of those PHDs?” His voice is light and teasing, and Bruce’s chest loosens again. Five years apart, with so much death and horror in the middle, and Thor remembering his PHDs, remembering that small think about him, it makes him feel vulnerable, known.

“My cousin taught me.” He doesn’t know where Jen is, now- she called him after the first snap, but he hasn’t heard from her since, and that sets off another train of thought that he can’t quite shut down fast enough and god, why can’t he keep  _ anyone _ , can't protect  _ anyone _ , just like he couldn’t protect his mom, or Tony, or Nat, and he speaks again before it’s too much.

“I used to braid Morgan’s hair, too, but then my fingers got too big,” he says. Morgan is a nice memory, at least. “If you’ve got a brush and a hair tie, I can do it now.”

“I’m sure I can find one,” Thor says. He stands up and cracks his back, smiling down at Bruce, like he used to.

Thor gets a hairbrush from some mysterious kitchen drawer and produces a tie from his wrist, and sits back down at the table, looking at Bruce expectantly. Bruce takes the brush, willing his left hand not to shake as he tilts Thor’s head down and stars to comb through it, careful not to pull on tangles. They’re silent for a while, Thor sitting, Bruce standing behind him; an easy, comfortable position to hold, the only sounds Thor’s sharp inhales when the brush snags and Bruce’s quiet apologies.

Bruce’s hand is trembling by the time Thor’s hair is smoothed out, a combination of cramps and nerves firing randomly. He reaches to put the brush back on the table when his arm spasms; his hand jerks and the brush falls to the floor, the ugly crack of wood on tiles like a slap in the face. Bruce feels his face colour, embarrassed, thinking _stupid, stupid_ \- forces himself to pick the brush up and put it on the table properly, gripping too hard in an effort not to shake anymore. Not to hurt anymore.

His hand is hovering over the table and it feels foreign like the Hulk used to, a shadow of something else, a scar. And he knows he should say something and break the silence, go back to Thor’s hair, but all of a sudden he can’t, it’s too far away- so he sees rather than feels Thor’s hand coming up to touch his own, Thor’s fingers wrapping around his palm, bringing everything back into sharp focus. Bruce can feel how gentle Thor’s being, can feel the scars on his hand; he breathes in, jerkily, he can’t help it. He feels like a butterfly pinned to a board. He feels like he’s going to cry. He doesn’t pull his hand away.

Thor turns Bruce’s hand until it faces up and moves it, slowly, towards him, and Bruce’s breath catches and comes out all in rush when Thor lays a kiss on the centre of his palm.

Maybe it’s because Thor still isn’t looking at him, and that makes it easier, or maybe it’s because he can still feel Thor’s stubble on his skin and the warmth of the kiss, but he breathes once, twice, and says, “I miss you.”

Thor looks up at him and blinks. Bruce feels raw, itching like a bruise and he can’t look away, lets himself look back at Thor, lets himself feel the ache of everything that’s happened. The distance between them is closing, and if Bruce were someone else, he might say more, he might- _kiss_ Thor, or something, he might be braver. But he’s not someone else, so he sits down heavily on the wooden chair next to Thor’s and buries his head in his arms. His words are muffled by his sleeve when he speaks.

“Sorry,” he starts, throat thick. “I’m sorry, for- that I left. And, I love you, you know.” it burns out of him.“I think. I.” 

Bruce hears a shuffling noise and feels a hand on his forearm. He forcibly pushes himself up, and he knows his face is red and his eyes are blurry, but Thor is looking at him so earnestly he can’t feel embarrassed. Thor’s eyes are rimmed red too, and Bruce almost croaks out a laugh, because at least he’s not the only mess. 

Bruce sees Thor’s throat working with emotion before he speaks, the gruff voice of almost-crying.

“I missed you every day, Bruce. I was worried about you. I thought- I thought you left because you didn’t want to be with me. I thought I scared you off.” Thor is smiling, the kind of smile that only comes because you want to cry, sharp edges, self-effacing. “Why didn’t you come back?”

“I thought it was my fault.” Bruce’s voice is almost a whisper. “Heimdall was, was my fault. I mean, it should’ve been me, right? Especially when the other guy wouldn’t even come out- I thought it was my fault, that we lost. I didn’t show my face, for months.” He looks over at Thor, his eyes itchy, and Thor looks as wretched as Bruce feels. Bruce is pretty sure this is more articulate than he’s ever been about his feelings in his life. But Thor deserves it, deserves him to be genuine. “I know I should’ve come back. But, I’m not leaving again. I want to be with you, I always did, if you’ll have me.” Something in him breaks, he feels his eyes filling and blinks hard; but when he looks up again, Thor’s face is streaked with tears, and he gives a half-choked laugh despite himself.

“Oh, god,” Bruce says. “Look at us. Come on, come here.” 

He manages to haul Thor off his chair and over to the beaten up sofa in the small living room off the kitchen. He sits at one end and Thor curls up next to and on top of him, head on Bruce’s chest, exhausted by his tears, still in his thin sleep t-shirt and joggers, and it strikes Bruce how human he is. The humanness of his grief, his pain, his need to be comforted. So Bruce does his best, stroking Thor’s hair, feeling tender like a bruise; he can tell Thor is drifting off, he knows all about the side of depression that just makes you endlessly bone-tired and able to fall asleep anywhere. He wonders if gods can get depression. After everything Thor’s been through, he figures probably.

They’re comfortable, breathing together, and Bruce thinks it’s okay. He thinks they’ll be okay, because they always are; he’s back, he’s home, he’s not leaving Thor again. He’s about to nod off, tracing shapes on Thor’s back, when Thor says softly, so he can barely hear it, “Of course I’ll have you, Bruce.”

***

  
A week later, Brunnhilde texts Bruce a picture of Thor, his hand up in the peace sign, smiling widely, his hair in the two loose braids Bruce had done that morning before Hilde and Thor went on some queen-of-Asgard training course or something. The message attached reads, _Did you do this? He looks ridiculous. I love it_ , and Bruce smiles, lets himself have it, warm inside, because he’s staying.

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoy what i write, kudos and comments are always appreciated! and if you really like it or want to suggest something for a fic, you can say hi on tumblr at greedismyservant!


End file.
